Dodder Greenway Proposals Extremely Disappointing

Dublin City Council is looking for feedback on the emerging preferred route of the Dodder Greenway. At this stage the council are trying to figure out where will the greenway path be, what bridges would need to be built and other high-level details like that.

Dublin Cycling Campaign is extremely disappointed with the Dodder Greenway emerging proposed routes. Both proposed routes are of extremely low quality. The proposal ignore policies of the Dublin City Development Plan, the National Cycle Manual and DMURS.

Poor quality parts:

The council is proposing a shared path for pedestrians and cyclists. This might work for rural greenways with low numbers of users but in a city it only puts pedestrians and cyclists into unnecessary conflict

The shared path for bikes and pedestrians is as narrow as 3 metres in many places. This is very narrow and would give this path a C grade using the NTA’s quality-of-service measures

The council’s proposals include pile driven boardwalks along the river bank. There are alternatives that reallocate existing road space and cause no environmental damage

The council is proposing to use two narrow and isolated underpasses as part of the route. The (perceived) safety of greenway users is important or users will not use the greenway.

We encourage our members to review the documents published by the council and then complete the council’s survey on this topic. The survey only takes two minutes. If the council doesn’t hear negative feedback now they will proceed with their poor-quality options. The deadline for feedback is this Sunday 14th October.

As always please share the word with anyone you know who could benefit from a high-quality Dodder Greenway route. Sharing this article boosts our collective voice and makes it harder for the council to ignore our concerns.

Our full submission to the council is attached to the end of this article. As always feel free to reuse parts of our submission in your own submission to the council.